Last update: 1998-01-20 by WebMaster@366th.org
BY JOHN W.
BENSONIn the early morning darkness of Dec. 26, 1944, a large force of German soldiers attacked a small garrison of American troops holding the tiny mountain village of Sommocolonia, Italy, high in the Upper Apennines in the north central part of the country.
The fighting was fierce, and by daylight the 400 Germans, outnumbering the Americans 6 to 1, had the village surrounded and were moving in fast.
First Lt. John R. Fox, 26, of Cincinatti, Ohio, and a handful of his men watched in alarm from their post on the second floor of an old house as the Germans swarmed up the streets, lobbing grenades everywhere.
Fox, a forward observer with the 366th Infantry Regiment, an all-black unit out of Fort Devens reactivated for World War II, was directing American artillery fire into the area to slow the enemy advance, and he knew the village was all but lost.
As the Germans closed in, Fox spoke calmly by telephone to the Fire Direction Center, ordering up artillery missions from the distant guns.
'That last round was just where I wanted it,, the young lieutenant reported. "Bring it in 60 yards more."
The receiving operator thought Fox was mistaken - the order would train the full fire of up to 75 heavy caliber artillery guns directly on Fox's position.
Fox confirmed the order: "There's more of them than there is of us."
Seconds later the bombardment began. And within minutes, hundreds of shells had hit the target. each one powerful enough to blast the house and its occupants into oblivion.
There was no chance that Fox and his men would survive.
The fighting continued from door to door for the next several hours as the few Americans left tried valiantly to stop the onslaught, but by mid-afternoon the village had fallen.
That night the Americans counted their casualties: Forty-three of 60 men in the garrison were dead. The other 17 had managed a miraculous escape, slipping out of the village from undetected hiding places in the darkness.
Sommocolonia was retaken four days later, and in the rubble the bodies of Fox and his men were found among the bodies of the enemy. The dead had been killed in the shelling that Fox had brought down.
For that act of heroism, Fox was certain to be awarded a medal for valor, a Silver Star at least.
But it didn't happen. Not for almost 38 years.
But that grievous oversight due officially to reasons the Army says it could not determine but more likely a result of bureacratic bungling or racism, a military fact of life then, was finally rectified in March of this year when the Army approved for Fox the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation's second highest medal for valor in combat, outranked only by the Congressional Medal of Honor.
LT. FOX-See Page A5
(Continued from Page Al)
Saturday, the hero's widow, Arlene Fox of Brockton, was presented the medal, accompanied by the couple's daughter, Sandra Chase of Houston, and Fox's sister, Jane Pope of Cincinatti, in ceremonies at Fort Devens, as part of Armed Forces Day, attended by some 20,000, including a reunion of members of the 366th Veterans' Association.
Among the spectators on the platform was Hondon B. Hargrove of Lansing, Mich., a college friend and Army buddy of Fox, who while researching a book on the largely black 92nd Infantry, discovered the Army's blunder and compiled the evidence - an effort begun in 1947 - that finally led to the decoration.
Major Gen. James F. Hamlet, a member of Fox's company and his replacement as forward observer, made the presentation on behalf of the Secretary of the Army.
As he presented the medal, Hamlet said he would depart from protocol, which dictates handing the medal over to the widow. Instead, Hamlet pinned the medal onto the lapel of Mrs. Fox's white suit.
"I knew Lt. Fox would have wanted it that way," he said.
The citation accompanying the medal read:
"Lieutenant Fox's gallant and courageous actions, at the supreme sacrifice of his own life, greatly assisted in delaying the enemy advance until other infantry and artillery could reorganize to repel the attack.
"His extraordinarily valorous actions were in keeping with the most cherished tradition of military service and reflect the utmost credit on him, his unit and the U.S. Army."
In an interview several days before the award ceremony, Mrs. Fox spoke about her husband's death.
"I try to set it aside, but it's still there," she said, sitting with a reporter at the kitchen table in her immaculate home on East Street.
Retired in 1980 after 28 years as a nurse at the Brockton VA Hospital, Mrs. Fox, who has not remarried, looks far younger than her age of 63, far younger than a woman who's been a widow for so much of a lifetime.
Despite the passage of almost 38 years, It's clear the memories are still painful.
She felt, she says, when she heard of the honor earlier this year, that "it was too little too late."
"We didn't need a medal," she says speaking for the couple's daughter, Sandra, 40, an anesthetist at Methodist Hospital in Houston, married and the mother of two children. "We knew what he did."
A decoration now, or at the proper time, is no compensation for the young officer's sacrifice, the widow says, but even so, it "means a great deal."
Mrs. Fox, who grew up on the city's East Side, says she met John when they were students at Wilberforce University in Ohio, an all-black college. He studied biology and science. She took nursing.
They married and moved to Fort Devens In Ayer, and like every young couple, they had special plans, she says with a sad smile. Her voice trailed off, the sentence unfinished.
When Lt. Fox was killed, Sandra was then two years old, and Mrs. Fox returned to Brockton. While she worked, her parents cared for Sandra, and kept alive the memory of the young lieutenant for the child. There were the father's long letters from overseas, read again and again to the tot, who has saved them from childhood and still cherishes them, her mother says.
Mrs. Fox recalls that she worked night and day to keep body and soul together, but somehow managed to send Sandra through nursing school at Mass. General, and to Bridgewater State for a degree in French and to courses at Harvard and Boston University.
Grandson Morgan, eight in June, is bursting with pride about the grandfather he knows only by story, Mrs. Fox says, and he's been excited for weeks about the award ceremony.
Mrs. Fox would prefer to stay out of the limelight, now, but she says she hopes the matter will be kept in perspective.
The issue Is her husband's deed - and not its effect on her own life she points out.
"The emphasis should be with him - and let that be the end of it," she says firmly.
Asked for a photograph of her husband, Mrs. Fox Is able to fetch one from another room In a moment.
The picture, an old painted color photograph, shows a trim and handsome young man, with the look women would go for, a pencil-line mustache making him seem a bit raffish, even dressed in an Army uniform.
She says he was a typical leader. "He would not ask anyone to do something he would not do himself. He was outgoing and well-liked.
"He was really a military person. The Army was his life."
Hargrove, who met Mrs. Fox for the first time at the ceremonies Saturday, recalled the years of work to get the medal.
The 65-year-old Lansing, Mich., man, recently retired from 28 years on the Michigan Parole Board, said he learned by accident that the Army had overlooked Fox's heroism.
In 1947, while doing research to 'write a book on the 92nd Infantry Division, which' was known as the "Buffalo Division," Hargrove saw that Fox had not been cited for his action.
Hargrove, who knew Fox from Wilberforce University, and in Italy where their units were together, was shocked by the discovery. After all, Fox's act of bravery was well-known by his colleagues and "'ell-reorted in the national press.
He decided then and there to rectify the Army's error.
It would not be easy. He would have to produce solid documentation, long after the event. Such documentation can take years, and Hargrove had his own life to lead, a family to raise and a career to pursue. But he persisted, sending out hundreds of questionnaires to the men in the Buffalo Division.
"I tell you," he said "It got to be a crusade."
Eventually, Hargrove, a captain and commander of an artillery battery In World War II, did come up with several eyewitness who confirmed Fox's sacrifice. But one major problem remained. There was no official record that Fox had been recommended by a superior officer within two years of the action, which Is required by Army regulations if a medal 35 to be awarded. If that, is done, then a belated decoration is still possible. If not, the chances are rare.
All Hargrove had to go on in that regard was a story in the Jan.1946 issue of the Field Artillery Journal, by Col. E.
A. Raymond, which mentioned that Fox had in fact been put in for a commendation, by some unnamed 6fficer.
But <Hargrove was unable to track Raymond down, try as he might over the years. He hoped Raymond would know the identity of the officer who, had made the recommendation he had quoted from.
Unfortunately, both the regimental and division commanders, through whom the recommendation would pass on the way up the chain of authority, were dead, so the quest seemed at a dead end.
However, In 1979 Hargrove discovered that Maj. Gen. Hamlet, who had taken Fox's place as the forward observer, was assigned to the Inspector General's office. Hamlet might have the right connections to lend an effective hand. With all the documentation he could muster, Hargrove sent his package off to Hamlet in May 1980.
The Army investigated, assigning Maj. Robert Rousch, of the Awards and Decorations Branch. Rousch was able to locate Raymond, who was retired, and who could not recall who had made the recommendation, although he confirmed that it had in fact existed.
The Army was unable to determine that the recommendation had been made within the two-year limit, but there was strong evidence it had been done, and In March of this year, approved the posthumous award of the Distinguished Service Cross, saying they could find no explanation for the mistake.
"It's a marvelous feeling," Hargrove said.
Last update: 1998-01-20 by WebMaster@366th.org
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